Teachers' fates tied to students' marks

Ohio's public-school teachers will be sorted into four categories - accomplished, proficient, developing and ineffective - once a year under a budget-bill compromise passed by the Senate yesterday.

Ohio's public-school teachers will be sorted into four categories - "accomplished," "proficient," "developing" and "ineffective" - once a year under a budget-bill compromise passed by the Senate yesterday.

And half the ranking would stem from how their students perform academically. Evaluations also would need to include at least two 30-minute classroom observations.

If enacted, the legislation would dramatically change how teachers' work is judged. Some experts worry about the logistics of the shift, noting, for instance, that state tests don't exist for all grades and subjects.

"How does an evaluation system (work) that may require up to 50 percent of an evaluation be linked to student achievement when there's no student-achievement data to pull from?" asked Tom Goodney, deputy superintendent of the Educational Service Center of Central Ohio. He works with school human-resources officials in the region.

The budget language says that districts must find a way to measure teachers in those situations.

The House is expected to pass the budget today, allowing Gov. John Kasich to sign it into law.

If approved, the legislation would require the state to develop an evaluation framework by the end of the year. Schools would need to adopt a new rating system by July 1, 2013.

The new evaluations would be used to decide whether teachers are fired, kept on or promoted. In districts participating in the federal Race to the Top reform program, they would determine how much teachers are paid.

Current teacher evaluations rely much more heavily on a principal's judgment, often based on classroom observations intended to measure things such as a teacher's style, whether the educator keeps students' attention and how well the teacher understands the subject matter. Evaluations in most school districts don't link teacher performance with concrete information about student performance.

Some observers wonder: How will principals be able to complete so many labor-intensive and complicated evaluations?

"If, ultimately, every teacher is going to be evaluated every year, that's a far greater burden on evaluation than we currently have," Goodney said.

In many districts, only newer teachers receive an annual evaluation.

Much must be done to establish the new system, said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Council on Teacher Quality. "There are lots of logistical issues," she said.

The state's largest teachers union calls the budget language "unacceptable and damaging to students."

"Educators oppose one-size-fits-all evaluation and merit-pay systems that rely too much on standardized tests," Ohio Education Association President Patricia Frost-Brooks said in a written statement.

The budget language doesn't dictate what to do with teachers who don't receive high rankings. It doesn't specify whether they are to get help or what kind. It does say that districts should use evaluation results to remove poor performers.

Critics of current teacher-evaluation methods in Ohio say they are subjective and rarely result in a negative score.

Most districts use an evaluation form in which only one ranking is considered negative. Dublin's form, for example, allows principals to rate teachers as "distinguished," "accomplished," "proficient" or "unsatisfactory." Columbus' 4,000 teachers are rated as either "successful" or "unsuccessful."